Wow! No leash? No way to sheet in and out? Are you suicidal? Safety in kiting has come a long way, baby. The bar in your picture looks amazingly dangerous. You may be used to it, and may have never had issues with it, but it scares me just looking at it. I suspect nearly any modern bar would work for your kite, and be way safer. It might take some serious adjustment on your part to get used to sheeting in and out to control power, but would probably add a significant safety factor to your kiting.

Wow! No leash? No way to sheet in and out? Are you suicidal? Safety in kiting has come a long way, baby. The bar in your picture looks amazingly dangerous. You may be used to it, and may have never had issues with it, but it scares me just looking at it. I suspect nearly any modern bar would work for your kite, and be way safer. It might take some serious adjustment on your part to get used to sheeting in and out to control power, but would probably add a significant safety factor to your kiting.

Wow! No leash? No way to sheet in and out? Are you suicidal? Safety in kiting has come a long way, baby. The bar in your picture looks amazingly dangerous. You may be used to it, and may have never had issues with it, but it scares me just looking at it. I suspect nearly any modern bar would work for your kite, and be way safer. It might take some serious adjustment on your part to get used to sheeting in and out to control power, but would probably add a significant safety factor to your kiting.

jmho

Don

Flame on:See your problem is you don't know how too fully fly a kite and control it with your board. Not to mention there is a world of difference between a C and Bow/sle. I bet your think flagging a kite is safe too? What would be safer than just releasing it?Flame off:

I've been wanting to make a pulley bar for some time for my C's but our wind is just too inconsistent.

A straight up pulley bar is pretty easy to make up from almost any old bar. Short ones are best. Nice to find a solid bar, as in one with no centre hole, but most are so strong it doesn't really matter. If you want you can wrap the bar in bike grip to get rid of the hole and smooth out the feel on the hand. If you love it and want to keep it for all time, you can epoxy fill the hole. That ability to hold the bar centered so nicely with one hand and steer fluidly is what they are all about IMO.

Have built a few, but its usually not steady enough wind to really enjoy them around here. Have had some real fun in light air on snow with one but haven't played with the concept for at least a year. I seem to get bored and build one every few years! The one pictured is a good set up to mimic. The length of triangle you make has a big influence on how it handles. You want to go for smooth rolling of the pulley through the turning arc (longer). Done wrong (too short) it will be kind of binary switching from one side to the other. Just takes a little tuning to get dialed the way you want it.

The last one I built still had a depower line going to a chicken loop with my leash attached to it but I didn't route the depower line through the bar. I just let it hang from the pulley. Basically its just that your leash goes to the pulley, but there is a functional chicken loop in it so you can sometimes hook that in by hand and ride around with freebar style depower. Dont need a harness loop on the bar either. Takes a bit to get used to cause you can oversheet pretty easy with a freebar, but once you get the hang of it you can cruise around easy enough in the waves with pretty much unlimited throw depower, and then just unhook at the opportune times to ride around with the pulley bar. Leashed to the pulley you get a pretty simple double front line safety that my kites work well with.

Wow! No leash? No way to sheet in and out? Are you suicidal? Safety in kiting has come a long way, baby. The bar in your picture looks amazingly dangerous. You may be used to it, and may have never had issues with it, but it scares me just looking at it. I suspect nearly any modern bar would work for your kite, and be way safer. It might take some serious adjustment on your part to get used to sheeting in and out to control power, but would probably add a significant safety factor to your kiting.

jmho

Don

I almost thought your post was meant as a joke, but I believe you were serious Don ?But I assume you thought he was a new kitesurfer, or ?If so, I understand your concern of course

The rider asking (kito16) is a very experienced and quite skilled rider I believe (also with raceboards and extreme depower systems as used in racing) and knows most.

A pulley bar like the one shown works great, because you can hold the bar much better and freely without the stupid annoying depowerline that gets in the way all the time, and you dont need the depower when you are a skilled C kite rider.

There is in fact still a trim strap on the bar, just to get the trim "dialed in perfectly"

When looping a kite with a pulley bar, it will also help make the kite turn better

So for some unhooked C kite riders it is a win-win-win with a pulley bar.

On the very first kitebars, a FULLY fixed harness loop were used.But even on the bar shown, there is a release on the harness loop, so it is NOT an unsafe "historical" bar IMO, but a very typical pulley bar

There is even an "oh shit" front line safety handle (or like here for the fith line), that can also be used for your safety leash if you want

It might be difficult or impossible to find these from main production brands, or any brand though, as so few are using pulley bars now.Same problem as with "everything" that only a few uses

The last one I built still had a depower line going to a chicken loop with my leash attached to it but I didn't route the depower line through the bar. I just let it hang from the pulley. Basically its just that your leash goes to the pulley, but there is a functional chicken loop in it so you can sometimes hook that in by hand and ride around with freebar style depower. Dont need a harness loop on the bar either. Takes a bit to get used to cause you can oversheet pretty easy with a freebar, but once you get the hang of it you can cruise around easy enough in the waves with pretty much unlimited throw depower, and then just unhook at the opportune times to ride around with the pulley bar. Leashed to the pulley you get a pretty simple double front line safety that my kites work well with.

Well worth exploring.

The racers are now using sheeting systems where they steer with one hand and sheet the kite with the other, so that might also be a possibility for the usual style pulley bar except the pulley is moving in a slightly different arc to the normal bottom of the trim strap.It could also work as a possible O-shit type flagging system if you could grab the end of the trim rope before releasing the bar - if you used a cleat system like the racers instead of a strap system.

Last edited by ronnie on Sun May 19, 2013 4:59 pm, edited 6 times in total.

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